Entries categorized "California"

June 28, 2015

I try to drop in on Cathy Corison whenever I’m in Napa. I love Cathy’s wines, love how they commingle confidence and restraint.

We always taste together, catching up about wines and winegrowing, wine personalities, wine writing, but also about food, gardening, theater, friends, family. I never fail to come away with some new idea, some new way of thinking about wine, about wine writing, about why wine matters.

But these visits are more social call than formal tasting session, and I usually realize later, with a sigh, that I’ve filled my notebook with only the most sketchy, impressionistic scrawl, completely un-publishable.

This April I finally managed more than cursory scribblings, taking notes between bites over a lunch with Cathy and two wine writing colleagues, Elaine Brown and Christine Havens. It’s a lot easier to write while someone else is talking.

Cathy’s Kronos estate vineyard in St. Helena was a glorious backdrop on that sterling spring day. She purchased this property twenty years ago, building a spare and elegant production facility in the center of the vines. “It was a miracle we found it,” she said, because while the vineyard is old low-yielding, she loves its gravelly soils and wizened, craggy Cabernet vines, which conspire to produce silky, concentrated wines worthy of long cellaring.

Kronos Cabernet Sauvignon vines just before flowering

Cathy has also sourced grapes continuously from two other vineyards along the stretch of stony, alluvial benchland between St. Helena and Rutherford. Actually, sourced is an understatement, because she’s always had a hand in the winegrowing. The fruit goes into her Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, and as we ate and talked we tasted four vintages of that wine: The soon-to-be-released 2012, plus three older vintages now coming into their prime: 2006, 2005, and 2004.

Tasting these wines I was struck, as always, by their transparency. They are restrained but not reticent, yielding but not simple, ripe but never over-ripe. The alcohol levels in her Kronos and Napa Valley Cabs usually hovers around 13.5%—somewhat unusual in Napa Valley. These are wines that are made for the table, made to integrate with a meal, arguably more Continental than contemporary Californian. “My first tasting was European,” Cathy told us. “There’s no question that colored my sensibilities.”

At the beginning of her career, Cathy made wine only for other wineries. All the while, though, she says, “There was a wine in my head I needed to let out.” She’s been able to pursue that stylistic vision under her own label, Corison Winery, for twenty-eight vintages.

But stylistic consistency doesn’t mean same-ness, and her wines seem to celebrate, not obscure, vintage expression. The first time I tasted her wines, I mused aloud that they seemed like a vinous sisterhood—clearly related, but also unique and individuated. There was the tall one, dark-eyed and muscular with an athletic gait; the shorter one with a warm, complicated smile; the third one, fair-haired, languid, with easy features that belie a deep seriousness.

I’m always ambivalent about gendered metaphors, and recall suddenly worrying that Cathy might bridle at hearing her Cabs cast as women. To my great relief, she didn’t. “I’m never offended by the term ‘feminine’ to describe wine,” she told me again in April, when the subject came up during the tasting, “—as long as it’s used appropriately.” Meaning archetypically, analogously, not literally. Wine isn’t “feminine” just because the winemaker’s a woman. Plus, given how often muscular and masculine are used to describe Napa Cabernet, feminine might seem revelatory.

Cathy Corison among her Kronos vines in St. Helena, California

Our discussion turned to business, and I asked her what’s in her way right now. Land prices, she replied quickly. For a winemaker, high land prices translate to high fruit prices, especially if that winemaker works with high-quality Napa Cabernet Sauvignon. “I’m so lucky we bought this land three doublings ago,” she said, gesturing out toward her Kronos vines. If that was luck it struck again; recently she was able to acquire one of those two Napa vineyards she’s worked for years, securing, to her relief, a supply of great Cab fruit.[i]

Although she’s long farmed organically, Cathy’s excited to start pushing deeper, and is beginning a quiet transition to Biodynamics. She’s especially eager to begin working that way in the new vineyard. “I’ve always wanted to learn about Biodynamics,” she said. “Some people bandy the term around, and they do some of it. I want to transition to Biodynamics because it’s so in-tune with the universe. It’s taking it a big step further.”

Cathy is UC Davis-trained, sensible and canny, rigorous—but not rigid. I asked her how she thinks about Biodynamics’ admixture of praxis and poetics. “I don’t believe we have to be able to put our thumb on something to say it’s real,” she explained. “I don’t think just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not true.” Then, after a pause: “I buy it.”

Christine Havens, our lunch companion, has also been a winemaker, and marveled at the scope of Cathy’s enterprise, how much there is to be done. And not just how much there is, but how it all matters, even the small things.

“Every little thing in wine is small,” Cathy said, “but it adds up to something big.”

TASTING NOTES

2012 Corison Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley

This new vintage has a floral perfume that mingles roses, fennel, and toasted anise seed, and its red currant and cranberry fruits suggest ripeness but not sweetness. The wine feels alive, fresh and vibrant, with a kind of gamine, pliant springiness wrapped around a vital, muscular core. As this wine ages this youthful body will attenuate and sharpen, becoming even more beautiful. 13.9% abv | $85 (sample; available at the winery July 2015)

2006 Corison Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley

Deeply savory with dark aromas of cured meats, black tea, and almost-coffee spice. On the palate the fruit and minerals weave seamlessly together, and the texture is silky, with smooth, elastic tannins and a wash of glittery acid at the finish. Cathy called it “really lit up,” saying her wines hit “the sweet spot, with lots of bottle bouquet” at ten years. I think this wine has hit it. 13.8% abv | $100 (sample; current price)

2005 Corison Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley

The 2005 vintage was slow and cool. This wine, ten years later, is meaty, with a deeply smoky undertow and a sueded texture across the tongue. The palate of star anise, black plums, and coffee-bean savoriness wears the pleasant filigree of oxidation. This wine reads like brown velvet.13.6% abv (sample; the wine is currently available only in 3L format)

2004 Corison Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley

If the 2005 and 2006 are all earth and meat and darkness, this wine is radiant, aglow with a glorious, warm plum skin fragrance and a perfume like multi-colored petals. The texture is fine-grained and the acid is profound. Beneath this effervescence, though, is a kind of woodsy sweetness. The wine exudes a warmth, a quietude, like a paneled library with the sun streaming in, flowers in vases everywhere. 13.6% abv | $125 (sample; current price)

[i] Land prices (and concomitant grape prices) are a hurdle for all Napa winemakers, but maybe especially so for those who work with Cabernet Sauvignon. During the 2014 harvest, the average price paid per ton of Napa Valley Cab was a little north of $5,900 (although somebody, astonishingly, paid $35,000 per ton for nearly 15 tons). For further details on recent California fruit prices, download the 2014 California Grape Crush Report, published by the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Prices paid for Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon start on page 61 (which is page 65 of the PDF). ↵ back to text

May 11, 2015

Old vines are like old crones, siphoning earth’s blood from fractured bedrock strata, pumping it into their veins to feed their spring greens and plump their black summer fruits. They are no longer fecund, but not infertile, either. They are parsimonious, focusing their sorcery on a scant few clusters of tiny, potent berries.

One hundred and twenty-five years ago, Giuseppe Martinelli and his bride, Luisa Vellutini, arrived in California’s Russian River Valley from their native Tuscany. Martinelli broke open the ground of a three-acre hillside plot and planted it to Zinfandel and Muscat of Alexandria.

He farmed this steep-pitched slope by hand and horse until his death in 1918, whereupon his son Leno took over. Leno’s brothers wanted nothing to do with farming, and certainly not that hillside. It’s too dangerous, they said. Only a jackass would want to, they said.

Now, Leno’s son, Lee Martinelli Sr., farms the old vines of Jackass Hill, the only continuously productive vineyard of Giuseppe’s legacy. Although Lee has reached his mid seventies, he won’t let his own grown sons, Lee Jr. and George, take a turn with the tractor along that vineyard’s shoulder. Too dangerous, he says. Only a jackass, he says.

This spring I stood with both Lees among the vines on Jackass Hill, peering down the vertiginous, sixty-degree pitch toward more civilized contours below. The sun smiled through a high blue canopy, switching-on the mustard neon yellow and bleaching color from the old vines’ worn limbs.

Lee the Elder poured us each a glass of Zinfandel born from these vines three vintages ago. I swirled and sipped. The liquid was glittery, vibrantly alive, its fleshy red berries shot with shimmering waves of fruit and stone and acid.

I spat the wine onto the vines’ gnarled feet. Earth’s blood has come full circle, I thought. Here’s to another turn of the wheel.

April 27, 2015

Kathleen Inman is a fearless gardener. That she is also a fearless winemaker is almost beside the point, because it all starts with soil, and soil is a fierce and beautiful force to be reckoned with.

Being a fearless gardener is remarkable in an age when most people can grow only hair, or older. Kathleen got a bumpy horticultural start, helping out as a kid on her family’s Napa ranch. It wasn’t until after college, and a stint working at a winery, that her green thumb sprouted.

That’s when she and husband Simon moved to England for work—he in law, she in finance—taking up residence in a rambling old estate with acres of formerly-formal gardens. Every weekend Kathleen traded her patent pumps for Wellies and set about resurrecting the tired grounds.

It was her release. I’m a gardener, too, and know that blissful blindness that comes from working the soil. You forget yourself. You forget to pee, to eat or drink. You enter a trance, transfixed by the garden’s gravity. And at the end the day you look up and realize the stars have begun twinkling alight, and although you are tired and very, very dirty, you are somehow washed clean, too.

During the fifteen years Kathleen and her husband lived in England, working their day jobs and nursing the land back to life, she nursed a dream to grow and make her own wine, too. The turning point hit in 1998 when the couple decided to toss their corporate careers, return to California, and plant a vineyard. Within a year they’d found a ten-and-a-half acre farm at the corner of Piner and Olivet Road in the Russian River. They named it Olivet Grange—“grange” is an old English word for a country house and its barns and grounds—and set about planting seven acres of Pinot Noir, plus a little Pinot Gris. Inman Family Wines began.

Kathleen farms the soil organically, not because it’s faddish but because it fits her ethos. She’s also built her winery—really, her whole business, from plants to packaging—mindful of her impact on our earth (read more on her sustainability practices here).

I visited Kathleen on a recent gray, early spring morning and tasted through her line; those notes are below. I’d also spoken with her previously about her work and have included that conversation, too, because it’s illuminating and evergreen.

I love Kathleen’s wines, partly because I am, like her, a steadfast gardener. But mostly I love her wines because I love their elegance and grace, their proof of the fierce beauty that, in the right hands, the soil can yield.

You were a gardener first. How did you get into wine, and wine growing?

I grew up helping my dad in the garden at home, and helping my grandmother at what was left of my family’s ranch. When you’re younger, those things can seem like chores.

It was a prune ranch, but we had only a few prune trees left—just a few acres. My great grandfather had bought it just after the 1906 earthquake, and after World War Two the economy for prune farming wound down. He died when I was a little girl, and the part of the property that hadn’t been developed was sold off. There’s just one acre left, which my sister lives on now.

My mother’s family was Seventh Day Adventist, so I didn’t grow up with alcohol at home. But when I went away to college at UC Santa Barbara, I took a wine tasting class, and it got me interested in wine. Then I moved to England, and my passion came out for gardening. I had eleven acres and a big walled garden, and even though I worked in finance, it was an absolute relief to get outside and double-dig a patch.

I did all my gardening organically. I made worm-casting tea, composting the food scraps and putting them in the worm bin, then using it on both the vegetables and flowers. I also had big formal gardens. The place had had six full-time gardeners before the War, but we had only me, my husband, and one “bionic gardener,” John, who once threatened to leave to work in a chicken factory, saying it was too stressful trying to manage all of the plants.

With vegetables, I’d always just thought that store-bought tasted different from home grown—I didn’t know plants tasted like the place. That’s what fascinated me about wine. And not only do wines taste of the place, they also taste different when grown in the same place but made by different people.

Why were you drawn to Pinot?

I loved Gamay—the lower-end Beaujolais that I could afford—and I loved Riesling. My husband Simon had worked at Nuits-Saint-Georges to perfect his French, and the family he stayed with was a négociant. We had actually thought about going to France instead of coming back to California, but I wanted to be near my family.

I looked for land that would be suitable for Pinot Noir. We looked in Carneros, Russian River, Anderson Valley, and the far Sonoma Coast. I quite admire wines from there, but I didn’t have enough money to develop some of the sites we looked at. You need very deep pockets, and we didn’t come into this with a lot of money.

The Russian River was and is my favorite California appellation for Pinot Noir. The texture and aromatics of the fruit grown in the Russian River is exceptional.

Were there any vines at Olivet Grange prior to your purchasing it? How did you approach planting it out?

This ranch has a long history, from the 1880s. In 1935 the family owners thought they should get the winery going again, but it was in such a bad state they tore it down, took out most of the grapes, and put in apples and pears.

I loved that history, and when I renovated the 1918 Farmhouse I tried to keep as much as was there before, undoing what was added in the 1960s and ’70s. The land hadn’t been farmed for a long time, so I ripped it twice to make it easier to plow. But I didn’t use any methyl bromide to kill the nematodes. I wanted healthy soil.

The first few years I did a lot of the vineyard work myself, but Jim Pratt helped—he has worked with me since I planted, and not many people have worked that long with one person. He wasn’t doing organic farming when I met him, but now he’s one of our region’s largest organic vineyard managers.

If you could go back and tell yourself something at the start, what would it be?

I would have told myself to be more confident and go with my instincts. I didn’t go to Davis. I didn’t go to Fresno. I learned by doing. I’d worked in a winery where I had mentors, and felt really confident in the vineyard because of my gardening experience. But the winemaking—A lot of people I visited were doing things in very conventional ways, like inoculating with yeast. I brought the first grapes in and someone started sprinkling them with metabisulfate, and I stopped him, saying, “What are you doing?”

I call it sensitive farming, natural winemaking, and environmentally sensitive business practices. It’s not about the label. I do it because it makes healthier vines, which makes more resistant fruit, which tastes better. They put down better roots. They do better in drought. It’s the same in the vegetable garden.

When I tell people it’s an organic vineyard, they say, “Wow! This is really good for organic wine!” I wish people would apply more of the care and attention they do to where their food comes from to where their wine is grown and how it’s made. They think of fermentation as “natural” and don’t realize how many processes the grapes go through, and how many big and small wineries add things or take things away to get the result they do. It isn’t just water to change the alcohol, or acid to change the pH. It’s powdered tannins, un-toasted wood, enzymes, et cetera. Nobody asks those questions.

A few journalists have written articles about this, but most people who read those articles think it’s just the big houses that do it.

Actually, you can look less natural if you disclose your process on the back label, because it shows people the ingredients, whereas the next bottle doesn’t list anything.

Yes, exactly. But, I don’t want to have to put calories on the wine label—that whole nutritional thing. Especially for small producers, it would create the need to do a new COLA every single time.

Tell me about your winemaking style.

“Great wine is grown, not made.” This really is the truth for me. Other people talk about it, but for me it’s truth.

I do a lot of whole cluster; 2009 was the first time I experimented with it. A French friend had said you have to wait until a vineyard is ten years old to avoid greener flavors. But I’m impatient, so I waited nine years and did 20 percent whole cluster in one of the fermentations. In 2010 I did 50 percent, in 2011 I did 75 percent. I find it gives a really interesting aromatic profile.

Then in 2013 I did a 100-percent carbonic. I tarped it, and did all pump-over because I couldn’t punch down. It took 22 days before I decided I should press it off. It was nearly dry, and I basket-pressed it, and it went into a tank to settle, and then it dropped several Brix overnight. It was also the first to have finished malolactic of my 2013 wines. (Ed.: Find the tasting notes for this wine, 2013 Whole Buncha Love, below.)

I generally don’t do pump-overs unless I feel the native yeast needs extra oxygen; I just do gentle punch down. And I don’t do a saignée. I do whole cluster for complexity—I check the stems. I chomp on them! If they taste nutty to me, I’ll use them.

I feel strongly that I’m able to get nice flavor without high alcohol is because of what I do in the vineyard, not in the winery. I focus the vines on ripening the clusters by removing the lateral shoots, while leaving all of the lower leaves so that I prevent sunburn. Fewer laterals focuses the vine on ripening the fruit. My plants are super-focused. I think that helps; the stems are lignified down one-half inch into the cluster.

In 2006 I started buying fruit from Ted Klopp at Thorn Ridge Ranch. He removes the leaves, it’s higher elevation, and there’s a bit of wind. Those stems taste green to me, so I never use whole clusters from that vineyard.

I know you’re an avid cook. What foods do you pair with your wines? What cheese do you enjoy most with your wines?

I adore cheese, but I don’t ever like to show my wines with cheese. My belief is that wine always makes cheese taste better, but cheese never makes wine taste better. The lactic acid in the cheese—when there’s lactic in the wines—can cause them to seem flat.

But I love to cook. We had a dinner party recently where I did something kind of fun, blind-tasting two wines with each course. First we did the 2008 Inman Chardonnay with a 2008 Puligny-Montrachet, and with that course I did a curried parsnip soup. It was spicy—it had a little more on the back than I thought it was going to! The spices were turmeric, cumin, ground coriander, and a mixed English curry powder, plus onion, chicken stock, and parsnips, topped with crème frâiche and snipped chive. There was no celery or celery seed, but the French wine came off as have a strong celery seed aroma.

Then I did a local wild Coho salmon with a saffron Béarnaise and a little hedgehog black garlic mushroom ragout. We had two Pinots with that, one from British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley, next to the 2010 Inman Olivet Grange Vineyard.

Finally, I did one of my favorite things to pair with the Thorn Pinot: lamb shanks with Moroccan spices—cinnamon, fennel, carrot, garlic, spinach, garbanzos, and red peppers. I partnered that with a Rhône wine.

That’s a lot of spice. Slightly daring for Pinot Noir?

My Pinots have more exotic notes, like cardamom. I recently did a delicious duck breast rubbed with cinnamon, which I served with Puy lentils with bacon. It just tasted delicious.

I think of wine as a food, and think they’re meant to go together. Part of the reason I try to make wines that are lower in alcohol is because I want to be able to have a conversation during and after dinner, and taste lots of wines without having had too much. To me it’s about food and wine.

The following notes were made at a winery visit in January 2015, along with additional tastings elsewhere. You may have previously read one or two of these reviews (in Pinot Noir, Here and There; and Sonoma Chardonnay: A Baker’s Dozen), but I thought it would be helpful to gather them together here.

2012 Inman Family Wines Brut Rosé12% abv | $56Traditional method sparkling wine. Since 2009, Inman has produced a dry sparkling Pinot Noir from Olivet Grange fruit. Made in extremely limited quantities and vintage-dated, it incorporates a portion of the prior year’s wine for complexity. It’s a gorgeous, pale shell pink color with a fragrance of strawberries. Clean and precise on the palate, the body offers a creamy mousse and a delicious cleansing finish.

2013 Inman Family Wines Pinot Gris Russian River Valley13.3% abv | $35Whole-cluster pressed, fermented in stainless barrels, inoculated for malolactic (due to low pH), then lees-aged with regular bâtonnage. Very clear straw color with the scent of salt touched by Bay laurel. This wine has a kind of silvan, woods-washed-by-moonlight quality and a smoky back-note that reminds you that everything starts with the earth. It would be amazing with oysters.

2012 Inman Family Wines Chardonnay Russian River Valley11.5% abv | $35Whole-cluster pressed, fermented with ambient yeast, aged partly in new French oak and partly in small stainless barrels, full malolactic. The Brix at harvest was 20.9 degrees, bringing the alcohol to a Burgundian level. The result is an exceptionally pure and elegant Chardonnay redolent of lemons, apple skin, and crushed hazelnuts. The wine’s crackly acidity and chiseled finish snap the palate to attention, while the quiet finish drifts into wet stone and savoriness. I admire the wine’s brilliance and crystal clarity, plus its low alcohol.

2013 Inman Family Wines Chardonnay Russian River Valley12.2% abv | $35Whole-cluster pressed, fermented with ambient yeast, full malolactic with regular bâtonnage. Snappy and fresh, this wine suggests both preserved lemons and fresh-squeezed citrus. It’s simultaneously creamy and rounded but also very clean and bracing, lacking any distracting buttery notes. The texture is lean and chiseled, almost crystalline. It’s a wine of great purity and precision.

2014 Inman Family Wines Pinot Noir Rosé “Endless Crush” Russian River Valley12.8% abv | $35Grapes were picked in two passes, de-stemmed and cold soaked, pressed after three hours, then inoculated with a Provençal yeast. This is a big, satiny rosé with abundant basil, strawberries, and white peach notes. It feels ample and well-structured on the palate, partly because it sat on its fine lees for a while, yet its commingling of fruit and herbs and a tart-washed finish make it feel crisp. Kathleen’s reluctant to serve cheese with her wines, but I’d love to taste this with a bloomy-rind goat cheese.

2011 Inman Family Wines Pinot Noir Olivet Grange Vineyard, Russian River Valley14.2% abv | $68Whole clusters were used in several small lots; the wine was vinified cool with native yeast, then aged for 21 months in French oak with regular bâtonnage. A deeply fragrant with a perfume of beach roses, blooming herbs, and sweet tomato. The wine’s body is light-textured, though, and the fruit feels fresh and pure, washed clean by glittery acidity. Its linearity and herbal-floral temperament make this a terrific wine for salmon.

2010 Inman Family Pinot Noir Olivet Grange Vineyard, Russian River Valley12.5% abv | $68 (sample tasted January 2014)A blend of clones picked in four passes as field blends, vinified with native yeast to express the varying ripeness levels, then blended back; the final blend is 50 percent whole cluster, aged 23 months in French oak with regular bâtonnage. Limpid, pale red-garnet color with a clear rim. Deeply perfumed with the scent of roses, orange peel, cardamom, and ginger root. Great acidity on the palate, with lean red fruits, particularly ripe raspberry and ripe tomato, complementing a hint of cloves. The finish flames-out to orange and spice. Lively, elegant, and supremely drinkable.

2009 Inman Family Pinot Noir Olivet Grange Vineyard, Russian River Valley13.7% abv | $35 (sample tasted January 2014)A blend of clones picked in four passes as field blends, then vinified to express the varying ripeness levels; whole clusters from the final harvest date constituted 20 percent of the final blend; 19 months in barrel with regular bâtonnage. Pale garnet color. Aromas of rose hips, rose petals, orange peel, sweet tomato, coriander, and ginger. Wildly aromatic. Lovely acidity and light bodied texture, with rose hips and red currant fruits, plus pomegranate. This is a cool, restrained, and elegant wine with a bewitching nose and a breezy finish. Pair with rare meat.

2011 Inman Family Wines Pinot Noir Thorn Ridge Ranch, Russian River Valley13.8% abv | $68 (sample tasted January 2014 and re-tasted January 2015)De-stemmed and cold-soaked, fermented on ambient yeast, pressed and moved into 25 percent new French oak, spontaneous malolactic. Clear garnet red. Earthy sous-bois notes complement aromas of ripe black plums, red berries, and hibiscus. Plummy on the palate with a greenish cast, there are flavors of beets, blood, and black fruits. This wine is bigger, more brooding and earthy than Inman’s Olivet Grange Vineyard Pinot Noir, the yang to that wine’s yin. Both are wonderful.

March 15, 2015

Spring is nearly upon us, so I’ve been tasting Chardonnay in earnest. Well, and in California, too.

Below are thirteen Chardonnays from Sonoma appellations—Russian River Valley, Sonoma Mountain, Sonoma Coast, Sonoma Valley, and just plain Sonoma County. These are varietal wines, 100 percent Chardonnay, but they’re blended in some sense, too, a distillation of warm California sunshine with cooler breezes from the state’s undulating, marine-influenced terroir. They’re sometimes opulent, sometimes steely, and a little bit herbal-salty, but the thread that binds them is acidity (and expert winemaking). They ask you to pour them with food.

Sonoma Chardonnay is for people who think they don’t like California Chardonnay. Enjoy.

2012 Paul Hobbs Winery Chardonnay Russian River Valley14.2% abv | $47 (sample)Whole-cluster pressed, barrel-fermented with ambient yeast, aged 11 months in 46 percent new French oak, biweekly bâtonnage, full malolactic, un-fined and unfiltered. Aromas of lime and salty Bay laurel lead to a palate ripe with melon and lemon-scented cream. The body is rich and ripe with a suggestion of brown butter and nut, but the wine lifts open at the end with the freshness of a spring day.

2013 Crossbarn by Paul Hobbs Chardonnay Sonoma Coast14.1% abv | $25 (sample)Whole-cluster pressed, fermented in tank and neutral oak with native and selected yeasts, full malolactic, un-fined. Paul Hobbs’s second label pays tribute to a barn on his family’s 150-year-old farm in upstate New York. This Chardonnay is lightly floral, with a fragrance of pale spring flowers and daffodil. The body is ripe with green citrus, green tea, melon, and stony minerality. It’s light-hearted and lovely.

2012 Three Sticks Chardonnay “Durell Vineyard” Sonoma Valley14.8% abv | $50 (sample)Barrel-aged in 53 percent new French oak, full malolactic. Grown in two blocks in Durell Vineyard: Old Wente 1, which is cold and low-yielding; and Rocky Flat, with deeply fissured rock planted to Dijon 76. Aromas of buttered nut, honeydew, and preserved lemons lead to a body redolent of laurel and citrus. The wine is creamy with a slight nutmeg character, but what dominates is its silky acidity and a refreshingly snappy, almost-bitter finish.

2012 Three Sticks Chardonnay “Origin, Durell Vineyard” Sonoma Valley14.6% abv | $48 (sample)Fermented in concrete egg, aged 14 months in stainless steel barrels; malolactic was suppressed. This Chardonnay derives from two blocks of the Durell Vineyard: Old Wente 5, with a northwest aspect for abundant afternoon sunshine; and V9, which is windy, with rocky soil that absorbs the day’s heat and radiates it throughout the evening for slow, even ripening. This wine—like its fruit—strikes a brilliant balance between concentration and mineral finesse. Silky and opulent on the palate, it offers luscious pineapple and yellow apple skin, balanced by countervailing freshness and minerality and a lilting Bay laurel finish. Seamless, beautifully articulated, and sunshine-glorious.

2012 Three Sticks Chardonnay “One Sky” Sonoma Mountain14.8% abv | $50 (sample)Aged in 50 percent new French oak for 14 months, full malolactic. One Sky Vineyard is planted to the Old Wente clone at elevations from 900 to 1,100 feet, and its iron-rich volcanic soils top strata of calcareous rock. It produces a voluptuous and satiny wine with a scent of buttered nuts, nutmeg, and lemon cream. Touches of salted pineapple and citrus ornament the palate, which finishes with a breath of laurel and something like sea air. Still, this is a big wine, powerful and concentrated. Pace yourself.

2013 J Vineyards and Winery Chardonnay Russian River Valley14.3% abv | $28 (sample)Aged nine months in 22 percent new French oak, sur-lie aged, full malolactic. The fruit derives from the estate River Road and Bow Tie vineyards. Pineapple, Meyer lemon, and a whiff of laurel keynote the aromatics. The body is creamy and ample and suggests lemon custard topped with ripe apricots with a sprinkling of nutmeg. Spritely acidity and the faintest hint of cypress balance the wine’s creaminess and weight. The finish is like yellow silk.

2011 Martinelli Chardonnay “Three Sisters Vineyard, Sea Ridge Meadow” Sonoma Coast13.7% abv | $63 (sample)Barrel-fermented with ambient yeast, aged in 65 percent new French oak for 10 months. Three Sisters is a 10-acre vineyard that sits above the fog line just inland from Fort Ross. It was planted to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in the mid 1990s by sisters Carolyn, Charlotte, and Donna Martinelli. The land was formerly sheep pasture, and this heritage is reflected in the names of the vineyard’s two blocks, “Meadow” and “Lambing Barn Ridge.” The wine from here is clear pale gold with green highlights. Its perfume of creamy lemon and salted green melon leads to a clean and bracing palate with pronounced wet rock minerality. It’s a lean, taut, nervy wine, great for cuisine.

2011 Martinelli Chardonnay “Bella Vigna” Sonoma County14.4% abv | $40 (sample)Barrel-fermented with ambient yeast, aged in 55 percent new French oak for 10 months. This is a silky, mouth-filling Chardonnay that reads first as cream, then as minerals and wet stone. There’s a finishing crack of sour melon and salted nut. It paired beautifully with salmon in a shallot beurre blanc.

2013 Patz & Hall Chardonnay “Dutton Ranch” Russian River Valley14.2% abv | $44 (sample)Whole-cluster pressed, fermented with ambient yeast, aged in 38 percent new French oak, full malolactic. A big, smiling, buttery Chardonnay, with lily of the valley and paperwhite aromatics top-noting pineapple cooked in caramel. It has good acidity and a finishing mineral snap, but overall this is a huge wine, abundant with tropical fruits and roasted hazelnuts steeped in brown butter and lemon. It is bit de trop and landed here by a whisker, but it’s admirably crafted and will please those who prefer a more opulent Chardonnay.

2013 Inman Family Wines Chardonnay Russian River Valley12.2% abv | $35 (sample)Whole-cluster pressed, fermented with ambient yeast, full malolactic with regular bâtonnage. Snappy and fresh, this wine suggests both preserved lemons and fresh-squeezed citrus. Creamy and rounded but still very clean and bracing, lacking any distracting buttery notes. The texture is lean and chiseled, almost crystalline. It’s a wine of great purity and precision.

2012 Inman Family Wines Chardonnay Russian River Valley11.5% abv | $35 (sample)Whole-cluster pressed, fermented with ambient yeast, aged partly in new French oak and partly in small stainless barrels, full malolactic. The Brix at harvest was 20.9 degrees, bringing the alcohol in at a Burgundian level. The result is an exceptionally pure and elegant Chardonnay redolent of lemons, apple skin, and crushed hazelnuts. The wine’s crackly acidity and chiseled finish snap the palate to attention, while the quiet finish drifts into wet stone and savoriness. I admire the wine’s brilliance and crystal clarity, plus its low alcohol. California Chardonnay: take note.

February 15, 2015

I admit some ambivalence about California Sauvignon Blanc. It often feels too plush, ripe with buxom tropical fruits and sweet melon and encumbered by new oak and the buttery distractions of malolactic fermentation. I’m good for only a glass before my palate fatigues.

But the state’s cooler regions and higher elevations can yield wines with crisp acidity and flavorful complexity developed during long, slow ripening. These are the wines that showcase the grape’s distinctive green citrus notes, and their freshness and vitality let them sing with a range of foods.

Below are seven standout Napa and Sonoma Sauvignon Blancs from recent tastings, including a few I sampled in late January during visits to the wineries. These wines are sunny but not unserious, with a deliciousness that reminds me, as the icy Arctic wind howls at my door, that it’s always summer somewhere.

2013 Cliff Lede Sauvignon Blanc Napa Valley14.7% abv | $25 (sample tasted at the winery) Made from 91 percent Sauvignon Blanc, 7 percent Sémillon, and 2 percent Sauvignon Vert (a.k.a. Muscadelle). These are older vines, most dating from the 1970s, although the Sémillon and Sauvignon Vert were planted in 1947. The fruit was macerated for 24 hours and vinified partly in concrete egg, plus neutral oak and stainless steel. The wine then aged in cigar barrels, elongated casks designed by Loire vigneron Didier Dagueneau specifically for Sauvignon Blanc. The result is focused and highly polished, with a fragrance of Mandarin oranges and lemon peels rounded with sweet tropical flowers. The texture is mouth-filling and silky, but there’s also citrusy lemon-lime acidity, and the wine finishes with a refreshing snap of grapefruit.

2013 Sivas-Sonoma Sauvignon Blanc Sonoma County 13.5% abv | $16 (sample)Sivas-Sonoma was launched in 2011 by fourth-generation winemaker Donny Sebastiani, also a partner with his father and brother in the négociant business Don Sebastiani & Sons. This wine is 100 percent Sauvignon Blanc, grown mostly in Alexander Valley—a relatively warm region, but blessed with cooling nights and morning fog exhaled by the Russian River. The wine’s spritely green apple and lime blossom aromatics open onto a mouthful of tart pineapple, melon, and green citrus. Crisp, pleated edges and bracing freshness suggest it would be a great match for goat cheese, shrimp and shellfish, and salads dressed with citrus. A good value.

2013 Somerston Wine Co. Priest Ranch Sauvignon Blanc Napa Valley14.4% abv | $26 (sample tasted at the winery)Somerston’s 1,600-acre estate lies twelve miles east of the town of Rutherford. The property conjoined the Priest Ranch and Lynch Vineyards, both continuously farmed since the mid-1800s. The varied topography reaches to 2,400 feet, and a 129-acre patchwork of vineyards includes the usual suspects—Cabernet Sauvignon, Sauvignon Blanc, Zinfandel—plus dark horses like Grenache Blanc, Barbera, and Viognier. Orchards, woods, and pastures are currently being redeveloped into a sustainable farm producing honey, olive oils, and vegetables, and lots and lots of sheep. The Priest Ranch label includes nine varietal wines and blends, plus a nonvintage rosé sparkler (if you get a chance to try the Grenache Blanc, jump). The 2013 Sauvignon Blanc was vinified in stainless and neutral oak, then aged on lees for seven months with regular bâtonnage. The result is a shiny little wine, with tropical fruits and citrus peel and a pleasing whisper of laurel at the finish.

2011 Somerston Wine Co. Somerston Sauvignon Blanc Napa Valley14.9% abv | $40 (sample tasted at the winery)“Priest Ranch is the history. Somerston is the future,” said Melissa Miller, Somerston’s director of marketing, as she poured through both wines in the company’s Yountville tasting room. The Somerston label is reserved for limited-production Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, and a red Bordeaux blend called Stornoway. Despite a wet, cold vintage, the 2011 Somerston Sauvignon Blanc manages ripeness, with a body redolent of nut, apple skin, pineapple, and tropical fruits, and a silkiness developed from six months in French oak with twice monthly bâtonnage. It’s light textured for all of its alcohol, a friendly and accessible wine.

2013 Grgich Hills Estate Fumé Blanc Napa Valley14.1% abv | $30 (sample)This 100 percent Sauvignon Blanc was grown in the winery’s organic American Canyon and Carneros vineyards, then fermented on native yeast in a mix of 900-gallon foudres and used oak barrels. The wine then aged on lees in neutral oak for six months. Green citrus, green melon, jasmine, and a slight savoriness keynote the aroma profile. The body offers melon and passion fruit, while refreshing lime citrus and bass notes of white tea and ginger enliven the finish.

2013 Grgich Hills Estate Sauvignon Blanc “Essence, Miljenko’s Selection” Napa Valley14.1% abv | $55 (sample)This fruit is also from grown in Grgich’s American Canyon and Carneros vineyards. It was hand-harvested at night, then fermented cool with ambient yeast in 1,500-gallon French oak casks, in which the wine subsequently reposed for nine months. The result is a finely-detailed Sauvignon Blanc, delicate but not shy, with a perfume of flowery lime and almost-jasmine. Tropical fruits and citrus add an exotic note, but there’s a seriousness underneath, along with a hint of green tea. The wine’s satiny, succulent texture has a finish that blazes with glorious acid.

2013 Davis Bynum Sauvignon Blanc “Virginia’s Block” Russian River Valley, Sonoma County13.5% abv | $25 (sample)This fruit was grown in a 5-acre block of Garfield Ranch, one of Bynum’s estate vineyards. Soils here are shallow, stony, and clay-based but well-drained (it’s Huichica loam, for the soil nerds out there). Careful canopy management during the warm 2013 season slowed the ripening. Fruit was pressed and fermented slowly on native yeasts, malolactic was suppressed, and three-quarters of the lots spent four months in old French oak. The finished wine is smooth and creamy textured, earthy and herbaceous, with a welcome funky edge. There’s lots of green citrus here, plus guava and green melon, but overall this is a simply delicious wine—shimmering, vibrant, and serious.